Zelle is seeing thousands of signups each day and last year saw $75bn in payments, but fraud has become a bigger problem for the company; fraudsters have used some weaknesses like inconsistent notifications when money is sent or received and the speed of transactions because the full posting happens later; they have also seen spoof emails or texts which trick customers into authorizing transactions to a fraudster, Zelle and the banks say they are working on improving the issues. Source.
American Banker puts together a slideshow on the key trends in digital banking; some of the trends include more customers using digital payments, digital banking adoption is increasing globally, consumers are not happy with PFM options offered by banks and overall banks are still highly trusted for managing money. Source.
Blockchain payments company BitPay has raised more than $40mn in their most recent funding round; the new funds will help the company to support B2B payments and expand to new markets; "We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand,” Stephen Pair, BitPay's CEO, said in a press release reported by American Banker. Source.
Many predict that Amazon will introduce a payments system for Alexa; American Banker looks at whether Amazon is really ready for to make this a reality; one of the biggest problems relates to the ability to authenticate transactions; Alexa isn’t able to distinguish whether a person is who they claim to be; article also shares the banks that are currently leveraging voice technology with some of the early adopters being US Bank, USAA, Ally, Capital One and TD Bank. Source
MasterCard and Facebook Messenger have teamed up to bring Nigerian small businesses digital payments and banking; 98 percent of Nigerians use cash when transacting with businesses; businesses message a Masterpass QR bot on Facebook Messenger to help enable QR code payments; the partnership is then supported by Nigeria’s Ecobank and Zenith Bank by setting up those businesses with accounts at the banks; the biggest hurdle in a partnership like this is the consumers or small businesses cannot transact with one another and so adoption is slow, though the partnership hope to solve that issue. Source.
There is a growing competition brewing in the payments space and Affirm is look to stay near the top as they recently announced the move into financing small ticket purchases; the move comes after Visa and MasterCard made similar announcements; the payments space has become a highly competitive market where customers look for the simplest, most transparent way to make a purchase of any size. Source.
Ant Financial has become a fintech giant in China and is currently valued at more than $150bn; while their successes are well known the company does have a number of pending issues; the company operates in legal limbo, their chairperson is leaving, regulators are becoming more active and competition is increasing. Source.
China’s central bank said they will open up the electronic payments market to foreign companies for the first time; international firms will be required to set up local units, establish infrastructure within China, and store client information within the country; China is one of the biggest and most competitive payments markets in the world; there are currently more than 260 companies with payments licenses and they processed more than $26tn in volume in 2017. Source.
According to Visa 96 percent of U.S. payment volume took place on chip cards, with the large majority being chip and signature cards; starting next month major card brands will look to move customers to the chip and PIN cards that have been widely adopted across Europe; Merchants will be able to turn cell phones into terminals instead of buying expensive POS terminals with pin pads; wide adoption will take time as smaller retailers might not see the benefits as quickly and large retailers have invested a lot in the current technology. Source.
JPMorgan Chase is the only U.S. bank with scalable businesses in every payments vertical; the bank has been investing and partnering heavily the last few years into payments innovation; they see checking accounts as checking and payments accounts; they have made moves into digital wallets, p2p payments, order and pay ahead apps and recently partnered to allow customers to send an receive electronic payments and invoices; the bank sees payments and banking as one in the same and with the recent news of their heavy tech investment for 2018 more innovation looks to be on the way. Source.